Paneficio Gallery opens in the heart of Strathcona
The intimate gallery space grew out of Paneficio Studios and launches with an exhibition by Dana Cromie
Dana Cromie, 2021 Star Garden VIII - Shaughnessy Remand. Pencil, ink, acylic on paper 42" x 48".
Paneficio Gallery (800 Keefer Street) presents Mind Fields by Dana Cromie to March 17. Open Fridays through Sundays from noon to 6 pm.
NESTLED IN THE heart of Vancouver’s Strathcona neighbourhood, Paneficio Studios has been home to a small community of artists for 29 years. Owned by Valerie Arntzen–visual artist and founder of the Eastside Culture Crawl and First Saturday Open Studios–and her husband, Arnt Arntzen, who is also a visual artist, the studio is known for its storefront displays showcasing local artists’ work.
Now, Paneficio Studios is expanding to include a gallery open to the public with window spaces that will concentrate on local artists in a variety of mediums. To celebrate its launch, Paneficio Gallery is presenting Mind Fields by mixed-media artist Dana Cromie, a longtime resident of the studio.
“Our space is nice because it’s very small, but it’s a space where you can take the work out of your studio and people can come and look at your work in a different way,” Valerie Arntzen says in an interview with Stir. “When I open my studio for First Saturday, I move my art around, and people who have come every month notice pieces they haven't seen before. So it just gives people a visual story to follow; the space takes on a different story.”
The gallery and studio are housed in a charming boxcar red heritage home located on Keefer street next door to the Wilder Snail Cafe and McLean Park. The building has a long history of accommodating creatives; originally home to a pattern maker, it became Montreal Bakery, Vancouver’s first kosher bakery, which was visited by King George VI. In all, there are three studios with six artists.
“When we bought it, the building was quite cut off,” Artnzen says. “We added deck space, and we embraced the idea of sitting outside the studio. All the neighbours would come by and we would talk. It’s a very vibrant neighbourhood.”
Arntzen’s involvement in and love of the Strathcona neighbourhood led her to start First Saturday Open Studios. She has found the window displays have helped build community.
“One time I had a display of typewriters, and there was a little boy and his mother, and she was trying to explain what a typewriter was. It’s one of my precious memories from the window,” Artnzen says. “When we had Ken Gerberick, it was 24 hours of neon lights and hubcaps in January and February of 2020. I wondered what the neighbours would think, and as soon as I put it up, I kept getting notes saying things like, ‘This is fantastic, it’s like seeing the sun!’ I have really tolerant and lovely neighbours.”
Dana Cromie, 2018, Water Front - grid #10. Acrylic on paper, cut & mounted on birch plywood - 27" x 48".
Cromie is drawn to light, colour, and rhythm, and his finished works can be digital, painted, or mixed-media and woven; these processes are interchangeable in his creative process. He studied visual art at Capilano College, Vancouver School of Art, and Institute Allende in San Miguel and more recently studied botanical illustration at UBCBG and Emily Carr University. Cromie describes the collection of works in Mind Fields as “a documentation of my recent drift from assembled landscapes to more cerebral inner-mindscapes.”
“I used to do an hour walk every day before the pandemic, and when the pandemic started, I started walking a lot more, and I got plantar fasciitis because of that and wasn’t able to walk at all,” Cromie tells Stir. “So in my earlier work of landscapes, I had cherry blossoms or kids playing in the snow, things I gathered from my surroundings when I was out walking. And when I stopped walking, I stopped pulling in those things, so I just had colours and shapes and started building things.”
Among the inspirations for Cromie’s recent works, he says, is Maxfield Parrish’s Mind Garden, a mosaic constructed from 150,000 pieces of glass. Cromie describes his new pieces as being “puzzles”, developed through a practice of constructing forms intended to build a unique relationship between the artist and the viewer.
“I don’t plan things nearly as far ahead as people think I would; I just find things that look nice in certain places, and then I let them fall together, and it’s kind of serendipity how the pieces all interact when they’re finished,” Cromie says. “I think a lot of artists get really caught up in what the piece looks like to them. I don’t think they’re often thinking about the viewer experience or connecting with the viewer. I like being able to draw the viewer right in.”
Arntzen and Cromie hope the gallery space will provide greater exposure for local artists and that their studio will become a neighbourhood destination. Arntzen and Cromie say that the new space will also allow community members and passersby to visit the space for as long as they please and chat with the artists about their work in an easily accessible way without the pressure of booking a visit.
“I think this will be a great way to make this building a part of the art community, because there is an art community forming on Hastings,” Cromie says. “The window is nice for people walking by, but the fact that they can walk in and talk to the artists is different. I think people are nervous about coming to artists’ studios. Different people come to galleries than to the studio, so it’s a way to introduce new people to our space and the neighbourhood.”
forthcoming exhibitions will feature works by Valerie Arntzen, Arnt Arntzen, Ray Ophoff, and more.
For more information, see Paneficio Gallery.
Related Articles
